Synthesis and performance evaluation of reverse osmosis membrane incorporated with functional graphene.

The most common method of desalination is membrane method. Despite the large application, this method has weaknesses such as limited flux and low resistance to chlorine. In this research, a solution based on the use of functional graphene oxide with thionyl chloride(GO-OCl) in a polyamide membrane structure is suggested. To implement this idea, a new method was used to optimize the production of GO-OCl membrane using Constrain Mixture Design (CMD) (a design of experiment method). For execution, according to the CMD method, thirteen combinations of three materials: trimesoyl chloride, m-phenylenediamine and GO-COCl were selected. Then the membrane properties including salt rejection, resistance to chlorine and flux were measured. With using multi-objective optimization method, the optimal concentration was obtained, and the corresponding membrane was constructed. Comparison of the optimal membrane performance with pristine membrane showed that the flux of water was increased by 50.6%, salt rejection decreased by 3%, and chlorine resistance increased by 4.91%